When Will There Be Good News?

When Will There Be Good News? is the brilliant new novel from the acclaimed author of Case Histories and One Good Turn , once again featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie.

Thirty years ago, six-year-old Joanna witnessed the brutal murders of her mother, brother and sister, before escaping into a field, and running for her life. Now, the man convicted of the crime is being released from prison, meaning Dr. Joanna Hunter has one more reason to dwell on the pain of that day, especially with her own infant son to protect.

Sixteen-year-old Reggie, recently orphaned and wise beyond her years, works as a nanny for Joanna Hunter, but has no idea of the woman's horrific past. All Reggie knows is that Dr. Hunter cares more about her baby than life itself, and that the two of them make up just the sort of family Reggie wished she had: that unbreakable bond, that safe port in the storm. When Dr. Hunter goes missing, Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried, despite the decidedly shifty business interests of Joanna's husband, Neil, and the unknown whereabouts of the newly freed murderer, Andrew Decker.

Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is looking for a missing person of her own, murderer David Needler, whose family lives in terror that he will return to finish the job he started. So it's not surprising that she listens to Reggie's outrageous thoughts on Dr. Hunter's disappearance with only mild attention. But when ex-police officer and Private Investigator, Jackson Brodie arrives on the scene, with connections to Reggie and Joanna Hunter of his own, the details begin to snap into place. And, as Louise knows, once Jackson is involved there's no telling how many criminal threads he will be able to pull together -- or how many could potentially end up wrapped around his own neck.

In an extraordinary virtuoso display, Kate Atkinson has produced one of the most engrossing, masterful, and piercingly insightful novels of this or any year. It is also as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, as Atkinson weaves in and out of the lives of her eccentric, grief-plagued, and often all-too-human cast. Yet out of the excesses of her characters and extreme events that shake their worlds comes a relatively simple message, about being good, loyal, and true. When Will There Be Good News? shows us what it means to survive the past and the present, and to have the strength to just keep on keeping on.

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Hard to star this one. For me, it read like two separate books. After the killings that set up the story, everything slowed down and the story became about the small, everyday things that happen in the lives of all of the characters (and there are quite a few) over time, and I wondered if we were ever going to get back to the main event. This went on for half the book. But once we got back to the murders, and several other intertwined criminal activities, things picked up and I enjoyed the story quite a bit. It's quite an obvious division, and makes me wonder if the author enjoyed developing her characters so much that she forgot about the point of the story. OR...the point of the story was in fact the character development, in which case it was I who missed the point. Things get tied up (for the most part) at the end, but for myself, I could have done with less of what seemed like dithering at the start. Still, I will be giving this author another try.
NOTE: I should add that I 'read' this story as an audiobook, which made keeping track of the smaller characters dicey. In the final chapter or two, when the author makes sure that everyone gets an ending to their particular part of the story, it would have been handy to be able to flip back through a hard copy to remind myself who some of them were.

Atkinson’s third mystery featuring ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie. A little girl hides in a corn field to escape an attacker who murders the rest of her family. Thirty years later Brodie jumps on the wrong train and is almost killed. He is rescued by a young girl who involves him in a complicated search for a missing person. Atkinson brings all these plots together brilliantly and offers the reader wonderful character studies.

hania4987
Jan 16, 2014

this is the third of Jackson Brodie books. It was easier to follow all the intertwined stories because of the two anchor characters of Jackson and Louise.

Once again the puzzle pieces of this story all make a picture with a major surprise at the end that changes the whole perspective of the picture--if you've read the whole book. Amazing how Atkinson skillfully puts all the pieces in place, then pulls them all together.